On 5/12/05, Mike Matera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Tim, I have some thoughts to add about your whitepaper. I hope that you > (and the rest of the gang) find them interesting... > > The RTL should be open source from the get go. I have five observations > that make this case. Taken together I want to show that development of > open source RTL will promote community involvement and open standards > while creating profitable markets. > > Licensing hardware IP cores is a bad business. HDL code like Verilog > and VHDL require enormous support, well beyond what C++, for example, > would require. The behaviors of modules are too complex and not > abstract enough to simply offer users RTL and a manual. Paying > customers will expect support. In addition RTL optimized for one > technology is often very poorly suited for another. This is true of > FPGA to ASIC conversions. A good FPGA design should use almost > exclusively synchronous resets because timing is hard to control and > synchronous resets cost you nothing. However in an ASIC timing is much > easier to control and synchronous resets cost you transistors. A good > design may use exclusively asynchronous resets. This would require > potentially extensive changes to RTL level code. There's a long list of > companies that have gone out of business trying to sell hardware IP. Of > the companies that still do virtually all sell hardware IP targeted only > for their ASIC or FPGA technology.
In this paragraph, it sounds like you're suggesting that I NOT release the RTL, because "it's too complicated." > > Companies that develop cards based on OGP hardware IP could, as a > stipulation of the license, be required to give back any enhancements > they make to our code. The license could be flexible enough to let them > develop their own private modules but any user of an OGP based graphics > card should have the option of loading pure open source hardware into > their system if it is FPGA based. Thus we take advantage of our own > success. If OGP becomes the standard graphics platform we can be > guaranteed a rich and diverse set of developers. I am aware that there are many advantages to open source. This is why we are having this conversation. Unfortunately, you don't give me any suggestions as to how I'm going to keep from being undercut on price at a critical time in the development process. > > Further if the OGP reference design becomes the standard it opens the > market to smaller companies that will be able to produce a high end > graphics card without having to do the work of designing its algorithms > and driver. I'm not worried about small companies. I'm worried about big companies with big budgets who have better economies of scale than I do. > This will allow hardware vendors to compete on what > hardware vendors should compete on; time to market, performance, quality > and price. Precisely something we cannot do at this time. So, what you're saying is that I should go ahead and put myself out of business.... because... WHY? > Having exclusive access to the knowledge of how to build a > 3D engine will no longer be a barrier to entry into the graphics card > arena. For everyone but me, who foot the bill in the first place. > (Imagine what PCs would be like if every motherboard vendor had > to make their own processor, BIOS and operating system) Today this > barrier is what keeps two players on top and everybody else (including > the open source community) fighting over scraps. You seem to have completely missed my point, because rather than giving me suggestions as to how to fix my problem, you're telling me something I already know intimately. > It is unlikely that the OGP will be able to deliver a traditional 3D > renderer that is more powerful than one of the big vendor's versions. Duh. > The scale of the ASICS that go into the high end cards (300M > transistors, 130nm process's) is simply not attainable to anyone but a > large company. It would require an enormous FPGA (>1B transistors) to > rival the computing power with a traditional 3D design. Such an FPGA > alone could cost two times more than the super-high-end graphics card. > Also what is the benefit of going after middle of the road cards? Most > middle of the road cards are adequately supported in free operating > systems. The complaint that existing drivers, both open source and > proprietary, for high end graphics cards have poor performance brings us > right back to developing for the high end. Actually, the complaint is that the proprietary drivers don't work well and tend to make computers crash. The complaint is the cards that you can still buy new that have FOSS support are dwindling fast. No one on this list is expecting to get a performance screamer. They're expecting to get something that WORKS. > The potential of open > hardware lies in a user's ability to tailor graphics hardware to their > application. (Imagine upgrading the graphics algorithms on your card as > you upgraded to the new MESA GL which takes advantage of them; all with > a software installer!) Open source is a strength not a weakness. A > programmable open source graphics card could take advantage of > innovation that today cannot exist. This is another advantage of FOSS that I am already well aware of. > > Finally if you intend to sell the hardware IP for profit you should hire > engineers and pay them a salary. Where am I going to get this money from? > My interest in volunteering is to > provide the community, not your investors, with the benefit of my labor. Ah, but without those investors, there is nothing to manufacture. Do you just want to spend time talking about an open-arch graphics card, or do you actually want something to be MADE? > I know that you have to live, work and eat just like me. My intention > is not to offend you. I want to point out that it is not realistic to > expect that people will volunteer for someone else's for-profit > enterprise. My day job pays me to make investors money. And I want to point out that we cannot make this thing unless we can get investors to pay for it. Do you have $2 million to donate to this cause? If so, plop it down on the table, and we'll go GPL RIGHT NOW. And I remind you that this is not my "for-profit enterprise." In lieu of a better business model suggested by someone such as yourself, this is the best, most sustainable way I could come up with to actually ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING. So, before you continue on arguing about how great it would be to open source the design, I suggest you sit down and write up a comprehensive, sustainable business model that will ensure the future availablity of FOSS-friendly hardware. Use real numbers and make sure every one of the concerns I mentioned earlier is addressed. If you can do that, and it's better than my approach, I will glady adopt it. If you can't, please stop telling me things I already know. > > The OGP has tremendous potential not only to inspire innovation but to > make people a lot of money. Except for those who have to pay for its initial development. > I truly believe that having open and free > hardware IP enhances such potential. I agree that we are wandering into > uncharted territory as far as hardware is concerned. Investors HATE uncharted territory. We're already so far out in uncharted territory that it's hard to get investors to listen to us now. And now you want to make the situation WORSE? What you are asking for is not investors. You're asking for charity. Where are you going to find that? > If you are in it > for the money –we may be talking about a lot of money-- you have a > chance to be on the ground floor of a revolution in hardware. I cannot make money if I make it easy for an already-established company to undercut me and put me out of business. > If you > are in it for the tech you have the chance to be the architect of a > totally new way of interacting with computer hardware. Take your pick > (all of the above is allowed). I am in it for the tech. I wouldn't mind making some money from it, but I got the idea from the fact that there isn't a good solution already available, and I want one. Chip development costs a lot of money, and the only way I can see to get that kind of money is to develop a sustainable business model. Spending a lot of money on something, just to lose all that money as we give our IP away for free to some big company IS NOT A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL. Notice that the volunteers on this list aren't giving anything away to a big or even a small company. They are assisting in the development of something that they want to have, and they don't lose anything they produce here. Ultimately, everything they do here will come back to them multi-fold in the form of good products and the Verilog code that will be released at a point when it doesn't make it impossible for their contributions to continue to be available to them in the future. If they help with this, but I can never make a chip, they are truly wasting their time. If I CAN make a chip, they've accomplished something. The goal isn't to make a big business. The goal is to sustain a vessel for their needs to be met. I have a way to do that. Do you? You've presented me here with a lot of things I already know, and combined with your shiny, bubbly, unrealistic view of the business world, you are using it to justify an argument that I can already make and a set of actions that will make it impossible for me to develop the IP that you are telling me to release. You haven't even BEGUN to suggest any useful solutions to any of my challenges. I'm sorry for being so harsh, but really, this is getting old. I've heard the same argument 1000 time. I've MADE the same argument almost as often. Stop wasting time telling me all of the positive things about it and take a careful look at the CHALLENGES I have brought up and suggest ways of solving them. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
